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Bill Beardall, director of the Law School’s Transnational Worker Rights Clinic, has been honored with Harvard Law School’s 2012 Gary Bellow Public Service Award. Each year the student body of the Harvard Law School votes to present the Bellow award to an alumnus or alumna in recognition of the recipient’s work to achieve social justice through public-interest law.

Eleven University of Texas School of Law students have been selected by the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice as Rapoport Center Fellows for summer and fall 2012. They will work with nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations in destinations as diverse as Mumbai, India; Washington, D.C.; and Guatemala City, Guatemala. Their projects include investigating cases of disappeared persons, implementing corporate accountability campaigns, assisting in genocide prosecutions, researching litigation on prisoners’ rights, and building the legal capacity of impoverished populations.

On April 23, 2012, the Law School hosted the final round of the 2012 Thad T. Hutcheson 1L Moot Court Competition in the Eidman Courtroom. Finalists Michael Kelso and Courtney Johnson argued before a venerable panel of jurists.

The Student Bar Association announced the recipients of the 2011–2012 Teacher and Administrator of the Year Awards at a ceremony at the Law School on April 23, 2012. These awards, determined entirely from student votes, honor distinguished faculty and staff members for their significant contributions to the Law School community.

At this year’s banquet, the Texas Law Review Association honored Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, '88, of the Supreme Court of Texas, awarding him the Association’s highest award—the Leon Green Award—in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the legal profession.

Professor William Forbath wrote "Workers' Rights and the Distributive Constitution,” which was published in the Spring issue of the journal Dissent.

Four members of the Class of 2012 have received post-graduate fellowships from Equal Justice Works, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., whose declared mission is to support “the next generation of lawyers who commit themselves to public interest law and endeavor to provide effective representation to underserved communities and causes.” Christine Nishimura, Jordan Pollock, Amelia Ruiz Fischer, and Keegan Warren-Clem received the prestigious two-year fellowships, which provide competitive salaries and loan repayment assistance after graduation.

The Law School’s Center for Global Energy, International Arbitration, and Environmental Law will send a team of students to compete in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot competition in Vienna, Austria, from March 30 to April 5, 2012.

Texas Law Fellowships has announced the recipients of the 2012 Excellence in Public Interest Awards. They are: Ian Spechler, ‘07, founder of the Legal Representation for Dually Managed Youth Project; David Gonzalez, founding partner of a sliding-scale criminal defense firm in Austin; UT Law Clinical Professors Bill Allison and Patricia Cummings of the Criminal Defense Clinic, who are being recognized for their work on the Michael Morton case; and Jordan Pollock, a third-year UT Law student.

Students from the University of Texas School of Law’s interscholastic team won first place in the twentieth annual Conrad B. Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court Competition, held at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, March 9–12, 2012. Third-year students Brian Cumings and Eric Werlinger won first place at the competition, surviving a field of fifty-four teams. Two other members of the team representing UT Law, third-year students Gabriel Markoff and Zachary Popovich, advanced to the final day of the competition and ultimately placed as finalists.

On Wednesday, February 22, 2012, students from the Law School’s Hargrave Society met with Senator Rodney Ellis, ’79, in the Betty King Committee Room at the State Capitol. Ellis serves as the Community Fellow for the Hargrave Society, which is one of the eight societies in the Law School’s Society Program.

John A. Robertson, Vinson & Elkins Chair at the School of Law, contributed two essays to a collection on caregiving in cancer entitled, Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer. The book was favorably reviewed in a recent issue of The New Republic.